Brian Hedden PhD ’12 has been appointed co-associate dean of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) at MIT, a cross-cutting initiative within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, effective Jan. 16.
Hedden is a professor within the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, holding an MIT Schwarzman College of Computing shared position with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). He joined the MIT faculty last fall from the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, where he previously served as a school member. He earned his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from MIT, each in philosophy.
“Brian is a natural and compelling selection for SERC, as a philosopher whose work speaks on to the mental challenges facing education and research today, particularly in computing and AI. His expertise in epistemology, decision theory, and ethics addresses questions which have turn out to be increasingly urgent in an era defined by information abundance and artificial intelligence. His scholarship exemplifies the sort of interdisciplinary inquiry that SERC exists to advance,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Hedden’s research focuses on how we should form beliefs and make decisions, and it explores how philosophical eager about rationality can yield insights into contemporary ethical issues, including ethics of AI. He’s the creator of “Reasons without Individuals: Rationality, Identity, and Time” (Oxford University Press, 2015) and articles on topics akin to collective motion problems, legal standards of proof, algorithmic fairness, and political polarization.
Joining co-associate dean Nikos Trichakis, the J.C. Penney Professor of Management on the MIT Sloan School of Management, Hedden will help lead SERC and advance the initiative’s ongoing research, teaching, and engagement efforts. He succeeds professor of philosophy Caspar Hare, who stepped down on the conclusion of his three-year term on Sept. 1, 2025.
Since its inception in 2020, SERC has launched a variety of programs and activities designed to cultivate responsible “habits of mind and motion” amongst those that create and deploy computing technologies, while fostering the event of technologies in the general public interest.
The SERC Scholars Program invites undergraduate and graduate students to work alongside postdoctoral mentors to explore interdisciplinary ethical challenges in computing. The initiative also hosts an annual prize competition that challenges MIT students to check the longer term of computing, publishes a twice-yearly series of case studies, and collaborates on coordinated curricular materials, including active-learning projects, homework assignments, and in-class demonstrations. In 2024, SERC introduced a latest seed grant program to support MIT researchers investigating ethical technology development; to this point, two rounds of grants have been awarded to 24 projects.
